STORRS, Conn. — What happens when you combine the success of Northeastern in third periods and the electricity of Skylar Irving every time she touches the ice?
Fireworks.
And a winning formula, apparently.
Led by two goals from the senior forward, the Huskies skated to a 3-1 comeback win over No. 1 UConn in the Hockey East Semifinal on Wednesday night. The victory ended the reigning HEA champions’ season at their home arena, and sent Northeastern to a ninth-straight conference title game.
But it took a while for the Boston Huskies to get to the win, and it certainly wasn’t an easy victory.
“Games against UConn never disappoint,” said Northeastern head coach Dave Flint. “It was a hard-fought win.”
The opening period was a classic matchup between these two squads. Both dominated certain portions of the game — faceoffs for UConn, overall defensive metrics for Northeastern — but elsewhere they were even. At the buzzer, the score was still tied at zero, though the teams traded high danger chances throughout the 20 minutes.
In the second, things started to get a bit more chaotic.
Over six minutes into the period, Jaden Bogden entered the zone onside for Northeastern before being batted off the puck in the corner. The graduate student then in retaliation shoved her stick up into the hands of Emma Eryou, sending the defender to the ground and UConn to the power play.
On the ensuing advantage chance, while the Huskies were parked in their offensive end, there was a seemingly innocuous shot from Kyla Josifovic along the blue line that led to the whistle being blown again. It was determined she had touched the puck with a broken stick, resulting in a delay of game penalty. Only 24 seconds of PP time had passed for UConn, and the rest was negated by the forward’s broken equipment.
Neither side was able to find the net on the 4-on-4, and on their 24 seconds of time up a skater, neither team recorded even a shot on goal. In fact, for the next two minutes following the Josifovic penalty expiring, the game was played mainly along the perimeter. Which is where defender Tuva Kandell ran into trouble.
After getting hit by Martha Mobarak along the boards, Kandell then wrapped around to the opposite corner, where she collided hard with Josifovic. The forward was sent tumbling to the ice, and Kandell in the process earned herself a trip to the box for boarding with 9:38 left in the period.
Then, much like we saw in the last matchup between the teams, official review chaos descended.
UConn’s coaching staff challenged for a major on the penalty, but the officiating crew determined there was not enough on the hit to award five minutes of power play time. After that was announced, Northeastern’s coaching staff challenged for a major penalty after Skylar Irving had been caught up high moments before Kandell’s hit. The officiating crew again decided there was no major penalty, and play resumed with a 5-on-4 chance for Connecticut.
Last time out, UConn’s power play saw a lot of success against Northeastern, scoring two goals on the advantage in the 4-3 loss. They converted again on Wednesday, after a pretty give-and-go between junior Christina Walker and senior Riley Grimley saw the latter lift the puck glove side and past freshman Lisa Jönsson for the 1-0 lead.
Northeastern responded well after allowing the first goal, dominating puck possession for stretches of time and generating a decent amount of chances to close out the remainder of the period. UConn however, and Tia Chan in particular, were strong against them and the period ended with the home Huskies still up by one.
Which is when we get back to the third period.
In the first six minutes of the frame, Northeastern out-chanced UConn 5-2, though three of NU’s chances skittered wide of the net. The fifth chance, a look from Irving from the top of the right wing faceoff dot, bounced off the wall behind Chan’s cage, and spilled out to the opposite side.
Which was where Irving was driving too, and the senior, after going 1-on-5 to get to the goal line, backhanded the puck off the post and past a sprawling Chan to knot the game at 1-1.
“I saw something on the first time I tried to get to the net,” Irving said, while going through the goal post game. “I saw [Chan] was a little bit open, so I was like ‘I just need to get this to the net.’”
After conceding the lead, UConn rebounded quickly, generating more looks and keeping Northeastern pinned in the opposite end. However, NU didn’t allow that for long, and soon began dictating the pace of play once more.
After the second media timeout of the period, Northeastern found themselves in the offensive zone for a faceoff. As mentioned earlier, UConn was outstanding in the dot, winning 33 in total to Northeastern’s 21, including 13 in the final period alone. On this draw though, Irving was able to beat out Brooke Campbell, setting up a nice play in the offensive end.
The puck originally bounced between Irving, Éloïse Caron, and Morgan Jackson, before the latter drove to the left wing faceoff circle with it on her stick. With Chan sliding toward her, Jackson opted to center it right onto the stick of Irving, who was bearing down on the cage. With the goaltender out of position, Irving tapped the puck home for her second score in six minutes, putting Northeastern ahead 2-1.
“I said it in our pre-broadcast call the other day, that [Irving] steps up in big moments, and she did it again tonight,” Flint said. “She’s our leader offensively, that’s what we need out of her and that’s what we got.”
The trio of forwards was not the usual top line Northeastern had been icing throughout the contest. In fact, Jackson originally started the game as the fourth line right-winger in order for her to acclimatize to the flow of the game after missing the last three contests with an injury. Her time in the bottom six didn’t last long, as she was soon rotated into the top units instead in the final minutes — proven by her contribution to Irving’s second goal.
“She was buzzing early,” Flint said. “We kinda compressed it down to three lines but I told Nick [Carpenito] to start rotating her through the lines because she was flying. If you noticed, she was going different spots on different lines and she stepped up with two big assists and played awesome.”
Now trailing for the first time all night, UConn didn’t allow that to deter them. The No. 1 team in the conference continued to push, and the physical play increased to match that intensity.
Which ended up coming back to bite them.
An extended shift in Northeastern’s offensive zone seemed to be coming to an end after Sadie Hotles carried it to the blueline. Irving poked the puck off her stick however, and turned it back the other way for a moment before Maya Serdachny came in and shoved Irving to the ice.
The shove became an interference call against UConn’s blueliner, and it put Northeastern back on the power play for the second time. The Huskies generated two shots on their advantage, but were unable to convert on them — though it did kill some much needed time off the clock for the other Huskies who were looking to convert.
Pressure ratcheted up for Northeastern during the power play, and that carried over into the minutes following as well. Jackson, once again on the ice, capitalized on a bad turnover by Meghane Duchesne-Chalifoux in the neutral zone to drive toward Chan once more. Jackson dropped the puck back for a rushing Lily Brazis, whose original shot bounced to Jackson again. After a tap pass to Brazis, the junior shoved it into a yawning cage to extend Northeastern’s lead to 3-1 with 2:51 remaining in the contest.
Now down two, the scramble for UConn began right off the ensuing faceoff. The Huskies pulled Chan in favor of an extra attacker for good with 1:56 to play, and with six skaters to Northeastern’s five, UConn went to work.
In the last 1:47 of regulation time, Connecticut generated eight shots on goal, which more than doubled the amount they had had in the rest of the third period combined.
Every single attempt was turned away by Lisa Jönsson.
By the time the final buzzer sounded, UConn was unable to make up any ground on the scoresheet, leaving Northeastern the victors over their Husky counterparts for the fourth time this season.
In part thanks to those eight stops in the last minutes of action, Jönsson finished the night with 36 total saves and just one goal against. After struggles in recent weeks, the freshman goaltender Wednesday seemed to be back in form, and if anything the high octane offense of UConn helped her with that.
“She was great — good job with her rebounds, just staying square to pucks, keeping things simple,” Flint said. “She’s better when she’s seeing pucks. She gets better and better throughout games when she’s seeing shots… She was awesome tonight, and gave us that chance to win.”
Wednesday’s victory not only elevated the Huskies to glory once again, it also exorcised some demons after last year’s 1-0 loss in the championship game to this same UConn squad. A loss that was ever-present by those who lived it a year ago.
“I think that’s something that we kinda came into the year with in the back of our heads,” Irving said. “And being like… ‘we don’t want to get beat here by them again or any team again.’ But it’s great to be able to beat them, this moment at this rink.”
With the win, Northeastern officially sets a date with No. 2 Boston University in the championship game on Saturday, as the two teams will travel to Storrs yet again with the Bertagna trophy on the line. A spot in the championship is nice, but if there’s anything this Northeastern team knows, it’s that the job is still unfinished.
“When it comes down to the championship, all bets are off,” Flint said. “It doesn’t matter what you did against them during the season or anything like that. We just gotta be ready to go. I’m confident with this team that they’re gonna rise to the occasion and do what they need to do.”
Northeastern and Boston University will square off for the fifth time this season on Saturday, though this time they will do so with a conference title on the line. WRBB will have live coverage from Storrs, Connecticut, where the tournament will conclude with the presentation of the Bertagna Trophy. Puck drop is currently scheduled for 12 p.m.